Tipping Is Not A City In China But Rather An Annual Shakedown From Building Staff Who Hold Your Cheapness Over You For The Rest Of The Year

As the holiday tipping season approaches, many — thankfully not me! — must consider the delicate subject of how much to tip building staff. And as etiquettist Judith Martin writes in a review of a new book about doormen, it’s complicated:

Here is the cure for any envy of privileged Manhattanites brought on by viewing their apartments in shelter magazines. These people may occupy huge slices of glass apparently suspended halfway between the twinkling of stars and the twinkling of street lights, and sparsely dotted with black leather, burnished steel, giant flowers and more glass. Or they may occupy horizontal versions of Versailles with wood paneling, ormolu mirrors, marble busts and tapestry-covered furniture. But beyond the financial cost, they and their not-quite-so-grand neighbors pay an emotional price for this every year. They have to figure out what to tip the doorman at Christmas.

The book answers the question whether doormen hold it against you for undertipping. Don’t worry — they do:

The agony of this decision and the perceived consequences of getting it wrong occupy a key chapter in “Doormen” — and this is not an etiquette book. It is a sociological treatise, complete with footnotes. Far from dispelling the tip trauma, the author, Peter Bearman, ratchets it up by killing the notion that asking the neighbors what they give or organizing a pooled tip fund will solve the problem. The neighbors are lying, he assures us, and they are sure to sabotage group efforts by giving extra on the sly. That is how important it is considered to be the tenant at the high end, but not the top, of the tipping scale.

Furthermore, the suspense of worrying whether one has succeeded or failed will be drawn out until February. To obfuscate the relationship between the expectation of tips and the improved service that begins in November — thus setting off the fretting season — the doormen routinely delay any punishments they mete out. Whew.

Meanwhile, Curbed posts a memo from a corporate-run DUMBO building that offers some, er, robust suggestions for what to tip:

While we may not know the answer for all parts of NYC, we have a pretty good idea of what hip DUMBOites are tipping this year, based on the above memo from Two Trees management sent our way by a Curbed tipster. Notes our tipster, “This tacky memo came from ‘management’ at Two Trees – actually the non-live-in super, the one who is hoping for a $300 tip from each of the several hundred residents at Court House. Tips according to this chart of recommendations, if given to each of the 13 employees listed, would total up to $1600 — more than a month’s rent for some apartments.

Raucous debate ensues in the comments . . .

Update: The folks at University of Chicago Press email to let us know that an excerpt from the Christmas bonus chapter of Peter Bearman’s book is posted online . . . thanks!

If Only Gordon Gekko Had A Gun

Masters of the universe trade company picnics for the opportunity to blow away inanimate objects at a shooting range — think Gordon Gekko with a semi-automatic — explained in full in “Now, Accounting Can Get Its Gun”:

This past summer, members of a Manhattan law firm went on a field trip to Danbury, Conn., where they spent an entire day at a range without swinging bats or golf clubs. The members of Kobre & Kim LLP were there not to hit and hack, but to lock and load, and to experience the thrill of firing pistols, rifles and even submachine guns.

“We do very aggressive litigation and trial work,” said Michael Kim, a partner in the firm. “So we prefer an activity that dovetails nicely with that aggressive culture, and hitting a little white ball on the greens doesn’t do much for us.”

In the last few years, a growing number of professionals like Mr. Kim are abandoning traditional company outings like softball, golf or fishing, choosing instead to escape the pressures of their busy workdays by blowing off steam – and rounds of ammunition – at shooting ranges that give corporate retreats some of the atmosphere of military attacks.

. . .

Russ Savage, a Manhattan lawyer who took a shooting holiday earlier this year, said that some of the men and women who have pulled the trigger on the increasingly popular excursion, especially those in the world of high finance, may have done so to gain “a feeling of empowerment.”

“For major corporate executives whose job it is to lead, this is a much more powerful way for them to maintain a sense of aura than by simply taking their people on a company picnic,” Mr. Savage said. “It’s an exhibition of strength and power.”

That said, the question remains whether this is a healthy activity to engage in:

“They might not be the best thing for a society that is already way too aggressive,” Dr. Kenneth Porter, a Manhattan psychiatrist, said. “When you look at what is in the media, and what kids growing up are exposed to, something like this could have a negative effect on the overall mental health of the population.

“However,” Dr. Porter continued, “shooting can be viewed as a legitimate sport and can be seen as a constructive outlet to express aggression, so it cuts both ways.”

Then, the reveal:

Seconds later, Dr. Porter, sitting at a picnic table at the Highland Lakes site with his fiancée and her son, picked up a long-range rifle and began firing at a wooden bull’s-eye, shell casings flying behind him as he squeezed off round after round, his body recoiling slightly after every blast.

“Before today, I thought something like this was unequivocally harmful,” he said. “But now I’ve learned otherwise.”

No word on whether the Postal Service has plans to institute such team-building exercises, for obvious reasons.

They Know . . .

If you’re cheating on your spouse, New York Magazine reports, do yourself a favor and avoid buying gifts at Tiffany’s. The sales help — and the private investigators who are trailing you — know what you’re up to:

“What drives the whole holiday thing is diversion of assets,” says Michael McKeever, another P.I. “Think of it like caveman days. You suspect your husband is out banging some broad. Then he comes home from hunting with only half a yak. You got to wonder, Where’s the other half of that yak going?”

In New York these days, that proverbial yak carcass often comes inside a powdery blue Tiffany’s bag. Although cheaters can purchase gifts at several stores for both their lovers — or more — private eyes are pressed to remember a Christmas they didn’t spend staking out the store’s jewelry cases. Salespeople there know what’s up. “Typically,” says one clerk, the two-timer goes for “pieces that go wow! Pieces that try to recapture a certain spark.” Simple solitary diamond pendants (about $2,000) are also popular. The smarter ones pay for their gifts with company credit cards or cash.

If You Have To Ask . . .

Page One Sunday Times, albeit below the fold — They’re Soft and Cuddly, So Why Lash Them to the Front of a Truck? Tsk, tsk . . . if you have to ask:

A bear with a prominent grease spot on his little beige nose spends his days wedged behind the bumper guard of an ironworker’s pickup in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. A fuzzy rabbit and a clown, garroted by a bungee cord, slump from the front of a Dodge van in Park Slope. Stewie, the evil baby from “Family Guy,” scowls from the grille of a Pepperidge Farm delivery truck in Brooklyn Heights, mold occasionally sprouting from his forehead.

All are soldiers in the tattered, scattered army of the stuffed: mostly discarded toys plucked from the trash and given new if punishing lives on the prows of large motor vehicles, their fluffy white guts flapping from burst seams and going gray in the soot-stream of a thousand exhaust pipes.

Grille-mounted stuffed animals form a compelling yet little-studied aspect of the urban streetscape, a traveling gallery of baldly transgressive public art. The time has come not just to praise them but to ask the big question. Why?

That is, why do a small percentage of trucks and vans have filthy plush toys lashed to their fronts, like prisoners at the mast? Are they someone’s idea of a joke? Parking aids? Talismans against summonses?

Don’t expect an easy answer.

Which is to say, expect one of those half-serious, unself-aware answers the Times loves to dredge up:

At the same time, [New York City Department of Sanitation artist in residence Mierle Laderman] Ukeles said, the trucker, perhaps uncomfortable with his soft side, may feel compelled to punish it.

“Binding a soft thing to a very powerful truck – there’s a kind of macho thing about that,” she said.

That double identification with both victim and agent of violence may reflect the driver’s frustrating position in society. Stuffed animals are found mostly on the trucks of men who perform hard, messy labor, which, despite the strength and bravery it demands, places them on the lower rungs of the ladder of occupational prestige.

The motley animal, then, can function as a badge of outsider status, a thumbed nose to the squares and suits. In that case, the cuter the mascot, the more meaningful its disintegration.

Thus, while Mr. [Dan] DiVittorio, of the Queens carting company, is quite fond of the red plastic skull that adorns his garbage truck, he will never forget its predecessor, a three-foot-high stuffed Scooby-Doo.

And it gets worse:

Scooby’s story lends credence to the theory of [School of Visual Arts art history lecturer Monroe] Denton . . . that the grille-mounted stuffed animal draws from the same well as the “abject art” movement that flourished in the 1990’s and trafficked heavily in images of filth and of distressed bodies.

“That is part of the abject,” he said, “this toy that is loved to death quite literally.”

The externalization of an indoor object is another abject trope, Mr. Denton said. “An important aspect of the abject is the informe, the lack of boundaries,” he said, using the French critical theory term, “the insides oozing out.”

Charlie Maixner, a steamfitter for Deacon Corp. in Jericho on Long Island, has taken the informe to its logical extreme.

On the dashboard of his Econoline van is an adorable and pristine white bear, a gift from his 5-year-old daughter. But the bear is not for the outside world. On the grille is Mr. Hankey, salvaged from a chef’s office during a kitchen renovation job.

Mr. Hankey, to the pop-culturally illiterate, appears to be a brown worm in a Santa hat. He is not. He is the carol-crooning excrement from “South Park,” where he is formally known as Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo.

The Case For Burying Utility Lines

The Times investigates the ubiquitous pair-of-sneakers-hanging-over-the-telephone-or-utility-wire phenomenon:

Strung along a thick black wire across the street, a few dozen pairs of athletic shoes dangled by their laces about 25 feet above the ground for which they are manufactured. The utility line, near the intersection of Crotona Avenue and East 170th Street in the South Bronx, has acquired some 40 pairs of sneakers. They hang over the block like a rubber-soled welcome banner, Size 8 greetings from East 170th Street.

Six pairs belong to Christopher, one of a dozen teenagers in the neighborhood who have spent months – years in some cases – tossing their old, not-so-old and expensive footwear onto the wire. Some of them said they did it to claim the neighborhood as their own, to represent, one young man said, “the ghetto where we come from.” Christopher, 16, hopes that years from now, he will return to the block and see his shoes up there.

“We really don’t care who likes it or not,” he said. “This is something for us.”

Contrary to what you may have assumed, it is not a sign of drug dealing:

Shoes-on-wires are a tradition as old as the notion of hanging utility lines on poles. No one knows who did it first or why. They decorate – some say deface – telephone, cable and power lines in neighborhoods from coast to coast. In the Bronx, the practice is particularly popular, one sign amid the borough’s economic revitalization of its grittier past.

Theories about the meaning of shoe-tossing are countless. It has been rumored to be a marker of gang or drug territory, but Detective Walter Burnes, a spokesman for the New York Police Department, said he never heard of someone using sneakers to publicize a drug corner. “I don’t think it’s the sort of thing that people advertise by leaving a sign,” Detective Burnes said. (Another spokesman pointed out, though, that the practice itself could be considered criminal mischief.)

People who live near shoe-lined wires speculate that it is a last-day-of-school tradition or a trophy collection of the shoes of mugging victims. Others said the ritual had no meaning beyond the fact that neighborhood youth were bored and not respectful. “I think it’s disgusting,” said Elizabeth Dean, 52, who lives almost under the utility line crossing Crotona Avenue.

See also: The New Republic’s Gregg Easterbrook arguing in favor of burying utility lines.

See also: Hanging Sneakers.